Der Furor's Mix-and-Match Social Media Post Generator

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Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Florida Solves Multiple Crises with a Single Master Stroke!

My attention was drawn to this article in yesterday's New York Times: Florida Moves to End Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren. The lead paragraph reads,

Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases. 

My initial reaction was that this was a horrifyingly stupid move, guaranteed to hike the mortality rate in a state full of elderly retirees. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that it was a brilliant move that will solve many problems plaguing (sorry about that) the Sunshine State and the rest of the nation.

It will help solve the crisis in housing availability and affordability. As large numbers of homeowners die of preventable diseases, their homes will come onto the market in great quantities, making more homes available and driving down prices through increased supply. Genius!

It will help solve the problem of overcrowded and underfunded schools. As the number of young children is reduced through the return of once-preventable childhood diseases, classroom spaces will open up,  teacher-to-student ratios will decline, and meager school funding will go farther to serve fewer students.

It will help ease the pressure on hospitals and other health care facilities. As more potential users of medical services die off, hospital beds will be more readily available and remaining health care resources will go farther. Unfortunately, the cost of medical care will not go down correspondingly, as this would negatively affect the profitability of health insurance companies.

It will drive crime rates down. As more young people, who are the most common offenders, and older people, the most common victims, die off, the number of violent crimes will probably fall, although it is unlikely to affect the overall profitability of the firearms industry.

I'm sure there are other advantages I haven't thought of yet, but they're out there. Far be it from me to praise the actions of ignorant political buffoons like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, but I have to admit that this was a stroke of genius. I'm sure other deep red states eager to resculpt their faces by cutting off their noses will soon follow suit. 

Have a good day. Get the shots. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

A Blue Suit At a Funeral

This past Friday, the President of the United States of America attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, wearing a blue suit.

It's not the end of the world you might say, quit being so petty.

Wearing a blue suit to a funeral would be a minor faux pas for most people, but Der Furor isn't most people - for better or worse, he's the President, the representative of all 340 million Americans, not just the 77 million that he always reminds us voted for him in the last election. And the funeral he was attending was for Pope Francis, a man far more honored and beloved than he will ever be.

Presidents have entire staffs dedicated to protocol issues. Do you not suppose that one of them told him that it's appropriate to wear a black suit to a funeral (and that the guidance provided by the Vatican had  requested that attendees wear black, the traditional color of mourning)? He's also married to a former model who, one supposes, knows about appropriate dress for special events (and who, in fact, dressed appropriately). Do you not suppose that she might have reminded him of the solemnity of the occasion? 

It's hardly a secret that I utterly detest Der Furor, who I think is a despicable human being professionally unqualified and intellectually and morally unfit for the presidency. He has no respect for others and pays not the least attention to the well-being, problems, and feelings of anyone but himself. But still one might think he could bestir himself to dress appropriately for the funeral of the Pope.

I should note that Prince William of the UK also wore a blue suit and former President Joe Biden wore a blue, rather than a black tie. The British population can make of the Prince's attire what it will, and Mr Biden was attending in his capacity as a private citizen (although he should also have followed the full dress code, which included a black tie for men) ... my concern is with the disrespectful message sent by the President of the United States - a sartorial finger prominently shown to the rest of the world.

We deserve better.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The New Bird Feeder

Our house adjoins a large stand of trees on land owned by the county Park Authority, and so we have lots of birds around ... the tree outside my study window usually has birds happily twittering away in it, birds of all sorts perch on our mailbox and on the markers in my garden, and I keep a colorful hummingbird feeder in the garden during the season to enjoy the visits of the energetic little birds. 

To help us better enjoy the local avifauna*, this past Christmas our daughter gifted us a high-tech, camera-equipped, solar-powered, WiFi-enabled bird feeder. The ordering and delivery of the bird feeder is a long story in and of itself, well-told by our daughter, but suffice it to say that a few weeks after Christmas, the space age bird feeder arrived.

Last week, Spring having arrived, I decided it was time to assemble and put up the new feeder. Those of you who know me well know that I am the least handy of men, and so I was somewhat daunted by the apparent complexity of the device and the stressful decision on how and where to hang it, but I gritted my teeth and got to work.

The actual assembly of the feeder itself was pleasantly simple - it consisted only of three parts: the feeder itself, the attached perch, and the camera, and the assembly instructions were clear and amply illustrated. I plugged the camera into a USB charger to juice up the battery and, when it was fully charged, I screwed it into its mount within the feeder. So far, so good.

The next step was to connect the feeder to our home network ... and that was where the trouble started. 

The instructions sternly warned me at every turn that the feeder would not work with a 5G network, only with a 2.4 GHz network. 

Huh? 

I know that we have a network. Signals radiate from a futuristic-looking device perched atop a bookshelf in my study and things talk to each other ... Agnes surfs with her PC, I with my beloved Mac, and our iPads and phones enjoy satisfyingly strong signal strength. But is it 2.4 GHz? Is it 5G? G-whiz? An electronic G-string? I had no idea and, not wanting to do harm to our expensive high-tech feeder, I decided to ask the question of our friendly Verizon help desk. There no longer being any humans around any more, I had to explain my query (several times) to the AI chatbot on Verizon's website ... which timed out before ever answering the question. 

Sigh.

So I gritted my teeth and just went ahead and followed the instructions on how connect to the network. This involved pressing the power button on the camera housing (check) ... waiting for the blue light to come on (check) ... then pressing the power button twice to make the blue light blink (check). Once the blue light began to blink and a three-tone signal to ring out, I was to hold up the QR code to the camera, which would then sacrifice a digital goat in cyberspace, thereby appeasing the gods and allowing the camera to link to our network.

QR code? What QR code?

There was a QR code printed on a card inside the delivery box, but it petulantly refused to do anything when exposed to the camera, which just continued to flash the blue light at me while broadcasting that loud three-tone signal that seemed to roughly translate as "wrong code, dumbass."

Another few minutes of frantic searching in the small print of the instructions yielded a URL that I was to type into my phone to connect to the website that would provide me with the appropriate QR code. I did this (no small feat with my single-finger typing on the minuscule iPhone keyboard), and finally got the right QR code, which gave the secret handshake to the camera, which finally - if grudgingly - connected to our network!

Success!!

By now, it was late in the day, and so I left the assembled feeder sitting on my desk, figuring I could do the outdoor mounting the next day.

Fast forward. Next day, 5:00AM.

Bilbo, carrying his first cup of coffee of the new day, walks into the study ... and the camera dutifully lights up and takes very nice, hi-res video of its first bird: an old buzzard in his underwear. 

%&$#*!

So now, the problem is: how on earth can I delete that video? I can find no instructions in the package or on the app. AARRGGHH!! So (having first turned the damn camera to face the wall) I send an e-mail to the bird network help desk ... and, after a few hours, they respond with the procedure, which I immediately execute.

Whew.

So now, I knew the camera worked, but I still had to mount the feeder and its accompanying solar panel, then connect the two. This required the purchase of a 4x4-inch post, which I cut to length and firmly mounted on the deck. The feeder included two convenient templates to help incompetent installers like yours truly drill the right holes in the right places and then - VOILA!!

Naturally, such an ultramodern, high-tech bird feeder can't use just any seed, so I dutifully filled it with "premium" birdseed.

And as of the time I write this, we have had exactly one bird visit the feeder** ... a beautiful cardinal which petulantly perched on the solar panel for a few minutes before flying away without even checking out my premium birdseed. Bastard.

So ...

That's the story of our wonderful, high-tech bird feeder. I'm told that the birds will eventually discover it and we will be able to enjoy the visits of our feathered friends. We will also "enjoy" the visits of the  squirrels and raccoons which abound in our area, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Have a good day. Enjoy your birdwatching, regardless of what sort of feeder you have.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

 

* A fancy way of saying "birds" when you want to show off your vocabulary.

** The manufacturer, having somehow learned of my distress, sent me an e-mail telling me that "It takes time for birds to discover and become accustomed to a new feeder. Depending on your location, this process can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 month. Once they do find it, they'll spread the word to others!" Sigh. I guess I'll use the waiting time to think about squirrel and raccoon mitigation strategies.

Male-ing Letters

There are a lot of really stupid things bubbling around in today's bizarre world, but one of the stupidest has to be the current plague of self-designated "alpha males."

In biological/zoological terms, an "alpha male" is the highest-ranking male in a mammalian social group, a position he earns and retains by being the oldest, largest, strongest, loudest, or most aggressive male in the group. In groups with "alpha males," the benefits of the position include priority access to food, desirable lodging, and ... perhaps most importantly ... the right to mate with all the available and desirable females.

Because we humans* usually mate in pairs and generally do not live in social (as opposed to political) groups dominated by a single male, we tend to see our equivalent of nature's alpha male in terms of wealth, business success, skill in sports, or rank in a military or business hierarchy. This is true even though that, nowadays, our business and military hierarchies produce powerful women  ... "alpha females," if you will.

This ability of women to dominate the traditionally-dominant men in various fields has led to a social backlash in which insecure men try to overcompensate for their perceived lack of status in various ways ... hence the rise of the self-designated "alpha male." One of the best current examples of this phenomenon is the proliferation of ludicrously clownish images of Der Furor, the least alpha of men, as a musclebound, heroic figure worshiped by his cultish followers ... 

Another example is the omnipresent online figure of "Nick Adams, Alpha Male"**, whose descriptions of appropriate "alpha male" behavior and recommendations for treatment of women are the epitome of cartoonish toxic masculinity. 

Similar to the "alpha male" is the "incel," or "involuntarily celibate" man, identifiable by his noisy complaining about the unfairness of his inability to attract and have sex with desirable women. You may recall that I wrote about this four years ago; sadly, such losers are still with us, and form part of the cacophony of whiny, insecure men that drowns out reasonable discussion of important topics.

In my opinion, for what it's worth***, a man who needs to loudly self-identify as an "alpha male" is probably actually a "sub-omega male" ... so far down on the psychological totem pole that he has to make up in volume what he lacks in actual manhood.

Leave the Greek letters to their original purpose: creating impenetrable mathematical expressions.

Have a good day, and avoid toxicity in your relationships. You'll be happier.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* "Naked apes," in the wonderful expression made famous by Desmond Morris.

** That's exactly what his Twitter handle is. There is some question as to whether this is a parody account, but it seems to be real.

*** Not all that much, I realize.

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

One of my favorite colorful expressions is putting lipstick on a pig ... for my  readers not fluent in colloquial English, it refers to making useless cosmetic changes to something ugly in an attempt to fool observers into thinking it's beautiful.

Back in April of 2015, I presented the Right-Cheek Ass Clown Award to the writers of North Korean school textbooks for their laughably obsequious descriptions of the incredible sporting and intellectual feats of the Kim family, designed to make a clan of murderous thugs seem like monumentally brilliant and praiseworthy figures that every starving North Korean should revere and emulate.

But now we're in 2024, a tremendously important election year, and lipstick factories are working overtime to cosmetically enhance Der Furor, the likely GOP nominee for the presidency despite his manifest unsuitability for the job. Consider all the overblown artwork and language being churned out by the MAGA propaganda mill to make Der Furor seem like a steroid-enhanced heroic figure rather than an overweight, narcissistic, petulant blowhard ...

I've always thought this one was particularly rich for a guy who avoided military service because of "bone spurs" and referred to military members killed in action as "losers" and "suckers" ...

 

This one's just as good ... the only thing Der Furor has in common with the tank is the weight ...

This one is particularly silly, comparing the heroic figure of Washington crossing the Delaware to Der Furor crossing the DC swamp. George Washington is probably rolling over in his grave ...

You may recall the I-love-me series of non-fungible token* trading cards that Der Furor hawked a year or so ago to his credulous followers, proving P.T. Barnum's observation that there's a sucker born every minute ...

One of the most amazing examples of weird thinking in recent memory is the adoption of the poster child for each of the Seven Deadly Sins as a shining example of god's will. An appropriate caption for this image seen online was, "A short time later, Jesus realized his watch was missing" ... 

And, of course, there are those who believe that Der Furor will prevail against his 91 criminal charges in court because he's got the right co-pilot at his side. This is important, because reputable lawyers concerned with their professional standing (and with actually getting paid) are not exactly flocking to his bench ...

Putting lipstick on a pig ... it doesn't work for rational people who actually see what's in front of them, but it seems to work really well for the MAGA crowd. Let's hope against hope that they smarten up before November.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Speaking of things attractive to the credulous.

Dumb Astronomical Acronyms

Acronyms are important communicational shortcuts which allow us to save breath and column space by reducing long names to strings of letters and numbers. In many cases, particularly in the naming of laws by Congress, the acronyms are made to be clever, designed to spell out something that relates to the meaning of the law, such as the somewhat ill-named USA PATRIOT Act passed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks - "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."

Fevered acronyms aren't just limited to government, though. I found this cool database while perusing Miss Cellania's website a few days ago: Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (DOOFAAS). It contains gems like:

ARMPIT - ASKAP Rotation Measure and Polarisation InvestigaTion

BIGASS - Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey 

CASA-BLANCA - Chicago Air Shower Array - Broad LAteral Non-imaging Cerenkov Array

COCOA-PUFS - COordinated Campaign of Observations and Analysis, Photosphere to Upper atmosphere, of a Fast-rotating Star 

GADZOOKS! - Gadolinium Antineutrino Detector Zealously Outperforming Old Kamiokande, Super! 

HO-BAGS - Hubble Observatory BAckground Galaxy Survey

and,

POOPSY - Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem

Check it out ... and if you have a good acronym for anything (not necessarily astronomy-related), leave a comment!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we examine the latest Great Moments in Editing and Signage. See you then!

Bilbo